4 to Explore Founder Hears and Amplifies Neighborhood Concerns

If you feel like City Hall is not listening, it’s time to subscribe to our 4 to Explore newsletter for North Seattle, in addition to Wallyhood. Founded four years ago, 4 to Explore covers issues and events from Wallingford to Wedgwood. No ads and no holding back.

Legendary urban thinker Jane Jacobs quickly discovered that City Hall often ignores individual neighborhoods. “Sometimes the city [government] is not the potential helper, but the antagonist of a street,” she wrote in her seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities. To get City Hall to listen, she concluded, neighborhoods need to unite across larger sections of the city, which she called “districts.” “A district has to be big and powerful enough to fight city hall.” While city residents now elect seven of the nine Councilmembers by district, the communities frequently need to unite their voices after the elections in order to influence the actions of the leaders they elect. Jacobs found that civic efforts united across multiple, connected neighborhoods “swung weight precisely because they represented opinion, and opinion makers, at district scale” (emphasis added). The good news is that our 4 to Explore newsletter works to unite 15 neighborhoods from Gas Works Park to Magnuson Park.

At 4 to Explore we listen to you and amplify your voice! We recently distributed our annual survey about local issues to thousands of frequent voters in Northeast Seattle (portions of City Council Districts 4, 5, and 6 and State Legislative Districts 43 and 46). Thanks to all who participated! We know you have busy lives, so we deeply appreciate all of the heart-felt and hand-written notes.

The one question with the most overwhelming response was about impact fees that could enable urban growth to pay for growth. As with our previous surveys, at least 85 percent of respondents said real estate developers should be required to pay impact fees, to help defray the costs of building new schools and other infrastructure as the city’s population grows. Even though allowed by state law and charged successfully throughout the nation (including 75 Washington State cities such as Bellevue), City Hall has refused for years even to consider impact fees. Many Seattle officials were simply afraid to offend the developers who directly or indirectly funded their campaigns. But, thanks to the recent drumbeat of support from voices across the city, three City Councilmembers recently announced their interest in impact fees.

Many for-profit real estate developers–who obviously have a financial self-interest to avoid any new fees–typically claim that impact fees will raise rents. This is false. Developers charge the maximum rents that the market will bear; if construction costs increase, they cannot simply pass those costs onto the new tenants when they open their new building. Moreover, impact fees are for new buildings only and, therefore, do not affect existing buildings. Several Seattle studies have shown that projects can absorb additional fees (click HERE, HERE, and HERE) to address the infrastructure impacts they are creating. Moreover, cities can structure impact fees to address affordability and feasibility concerns (click HERE).

Sadly, City Hall’s short-sighted refusal to impose impact fees during the current building boom means we have already lost an opportunity to boost public education. That’s because collecting impact fees from the cranes dominating Seattle’s skyline during the past five years could have already built new schools to provide relief for children and teachers crammed in our overcrowded classrooms.

This is a stark example of why residents need to unite across neighborhood boundaries–to show our solidarity over shared values, such as having city officials care less about developer profits and more about public schools.

For the most recent issue of “4 to Explore,” you can visit 4toexplore.org right now.

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Alex Pedersen, a Presidential Management Fellow at HUD during the Clinton Administration, is a former legislative aide for the Seattle City Council and publishes the Northeast Seattle newsletter 4 to Explore.

I gave up after a few minutes, trying to find his readership’s comments, but anyway … I wouldn’t be too discouraged by whatever you saw there. If you want to see what I mean, read reader comments on the Seattle Times online site, and ask yourself if that’s representative of people who read the Seattle Times. There sure are people who don’t like bike lanes, you knew that already.

You lost me where you make it clear you either reject the principles of economics or are arguing dishonestly:

“impact fees will raise rents. This is false. Developers charge the maximum rents that the market will bear; if construction costs increase, they cannot simply pass those costs onto the new tenants when they open their new building.”

So, there is no connection between the market cost of housing and what it costs to create that housing? Thanks for clearing that up…

donn

I thought he expressed it pretty clearly, but see if this clear anything up – suppose someone gave me a new apartment building for free. Built for my grandfather the apartment building tycoon, but he died and left it to me. How much rent would I charge? Exactly the same amount of rent he would have charged, after paying millions for it, and in neither case would it be based on cost to build.

Hi Donn. “What the market will bear” is based in part on the expenses involved in creating the housing. If you consider the effect of a tax on ALL new housing, not just your hypothetical grandfather, because all housing providers are in competition with eachother, a new expense will be included in the pricing of new apartments. There’s no getting around it.
Another effect will be that less new housing projects will be created because they won’t be profitable with the new tax. Whether you think that’s good or bad, it will mean less housing supply, which also contributes to more expensive housing to some extent.
You guys don’t have to die on the hill where you pretend that supply and demand don’t exist in the context of your favorite new tax. Just admit that it will raise the cost of housing by some amount, because mathematically, there’s no denying it. I don’t have an ax to grind, I just can’t stand to see obviously false reasoning.

donn

In fact the point is all about supply and demand. No one doubts that the supply of apartments has been short enough in the past few years to make rents quite high. Rents have gone up on new and old units alike.

There is, in theory, a point at which the cost of producing apartments could go up, and/or the rents they fetch could go down, leaving builders with no incentive to build more. It’s pretty obvious though, with what, 10,000 units coming online this year? that we’re not real close to that line. As long as that continues – i.e, as long as we have high demand, and believe me city hall is working as hard as they can to make the “crisis” worse – I can’t see how “mathematically” you could expect impact fees to make any difference at all on rents or production.

That theoretical point you mention is not a critical binary tipping point. Every expense is an unavoidable mathematical infusion into the cost of housing and will have some effect.
If the cost of producing apartments somehow dropped dramatically, many more potential projects would become profitable and would begin production, and competition among builders would drive prices down. The inverse is the same. Economics follows laws almost as strictly as gravity.
But I appreciate the lively debate! Cheers.

donn

I’m not at all sure there would be a significant increase. You know the new units this year is a record that nearly doubles the previous record. There are physical limits – the number of cranes, workers, etc. Production probably will fall off, but because the industry hates to create a surplus condition where there are vacancies and rents might indeed be driven down.
I have to believe that with your enthusiasm for a mathematical basis for economics, you really can see that the variable that’s going to be affected by impact fees, is Profit, and that you can admit that under current circumstances Profit is very high and will continue to be positive. The city council had a hearing on this a couple years ago, and lining up at the microphone to sing the praises of impact fees were not only other municipalities that charge them (Seattle is about the only one that doesn’t), but even developers, who cheerfully allowed that it wasn’t such a bad thing if it helped keep up the concurrent infrastructure, which is the point.

Susanna

Thanks, Alex. I really appreciate all of the work you do. “4 to Explore” is a great newsletter, I highly recommend it.

Wallyhood is dedicated to fostering community and communication in the Wallingford neighborhood. A group of volunteer editors rotate the responsibility of managing the site, and we welcome stories from all our neighbors.

This week’s editor is ​Jack McLaughlin. You can contact the editor-of-the-week at [email protected].

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